Methodology - Survey

Benchmark tool developed within the project was result of research that was conducted over two years. First, we have defined areas that are important for successful human resources management in HEIs, and for each area we have provided a set of questions. In the second step we surveyed HEIs in Austria, Finland and Croatia and received online responses from 135 higher education institutions, of which 43% were private and 57% were public institutions.

For each area we have identified in the first step of the process, we provided a set of questions that were then narrowed and defined during a discussion with experts.

In the second step we defined questions and two questionnaires – long and short version. The longer version of the questionnaire consisted of 68 questions and a short version of 46 questions. Questionnaires were created in the LimeSurvey program and distributed to participants.

Each country (Austria, Finland and Croatia) provided the administrator with a list of potential participants in this survey, including: Rectors, Deans, Vice Deans, HR-managers and other managers/specialists responsible for HR-issues and Administrative managers, and via the LimeSurvey program they have sent an invitation for participating in this research. We received online responses from 135 higher education institutions from Austria, Finland and Croatia, of which 43% were private and 57% of public institutions.

Using received answers, in the third step, we used Item, Reliability and Factor analysis for final definition of factors and items that build a questionnaire that can be used for evaluation of human resources practice in High education institutions.

Based on this set of data we have created this benchmark tool that can provide you with following:

What elements build the HR processes in High education institutions (like job demands, recruitment and selection, performance evaluation, career progression, etc.).
Which activities indicate good management of different HR elements (e.g. good information system includes: a comprehensive IT software (HR information system/HR data warehouse) supports HR processes, publicly available individual portfolio records for academic staff, a comprehensive IT software that is used for producing analyses for our overall institutional efficiency and reports about employees available to managers).
Comparison of the current HR situation in your institution and results of 135 institutions that participated in this research (you can also compare these results with a certain type of High education institution)
Overview and guidelines for Human Resources Management that are available on the web page of the project (http://hrminhei.azvo.hr)

We hope that this tool will be useful help and that it will contribute to your competetiveness through better human resources management.